A breathless, captivating art heist thriller that is also about the purpose of art and the sense of identity . Who owns art stolen by conquerors? This book deals with Chinese art but the same applies here in Australia with art by the First Peoples as an example. It is divided into three ‘Acts’ and written in short gulps of the 68 chapters with each of the five main character’s voices .
It all begins when Harvard art history student Will Chen observes an audacious smash-and-grab at the University’s museum; the thieves disappear with objects that were stolen from China centuries before. In the tumult Will appropriates a small jade figure. One of the thieves observes this, calling it a “nice lift,” and slips him the business card of a Chinese business mogul and billionaire, Wang Yuling, of shadowy mega company China Poly, who later enlists Will into the world of art theft.
Will and his four crew members are to plunder five bronze Chinese zodiac statues from various famous museums around the world and return them to China. The (real life ) statues from Beijing’s Old Summer Palace were swiped by The French and British in 1860 during the Second Opium War. The novel’s title, therefore, refers to not only Will’s Quixotic crew, but also the art museums that knowingly purchased China’s stolen artifacts. If Will and his crew can recover all five pieces, they’ll split a $50 million payout.
We meet Will’s crew and follow the complicated friendships and love/hate relationships between the five. Will is relying on Alex, now a software engineer after dropping out of MIT, to hack her way in and out of the five museums they have to raid – so checking the security cameras , alarms etc. Daniel , an old friend of Will’s, is a pre- med student at UCLA who dreams of being a surgeon (so very steady hands).His father works for the FBI in the art crimes division ( truly!) and Daniel and his dad have a very strained relationship. Irene is a p.r. major at Duke who has the gift of the gab and Lily, Will’s sister, is studying engineering and races cars in her spare time (so the get-away car driver).
All of them have their own complicated relationship with China and the identities they’ve cultivated as Chinese Americans , They are torn between the two – which is ‘ home’ ? Li’s book is about identity ,language , longing , belonging and loneliness .They never really feel ‘at home’ in either America or China .Li’s book also has as a major discussion point the morality of cultural heritage and who can own art (so not just China and First Peoples here in Australia , but for example Egypt ,Tibet , native American and Canadian first peoples , Korea and think of the Elgin marbles looted from Greece ).
We wonder – can they do it ?The first heist, in Sweden, goes well , however in the course of the second theft in France, they are thwarted when another gang gets to the target first.we then learn what happens next …
The book is also about the possibility of major life changes – what would you do?.
No wonder it has already been picked up by Netflix.
